Taliban fails to BCC an e-mail, reveals its entire PR mailing list

Fundamentalist militant groups sometimes fail at e-mail, too.

An apparent slip of the hand by a Taliban spokesperson has revealed the members of the group’s mailing list, according to a report Friday from ABC News. The 400 e-mail addresses include many journalists, but also a few members of government as well as “academics and activists.”

The Taliban regularly sends e-mail blasts with press releases highlighting its latest activities, usually from the e-mail account of spokesperson Qari Yousuf Ahmedi. But this time, the press release Ahmedi intended to send was forwarded from the account of another spokesperson, Zabihullah Mujahid. Ahmedi forwarded the e-mail on to the mailing list, but CC’d all 400 members, rather than BCC’ing them, so the full list of e-mail addresses was laid bare to all who received it.

According to ABC News, the list included “a provincial governor, an Afghan legislator” and an “Afghan consultative committee.” We can only imagine the chain of reply-alls that followed, but we’re certain it’s the stuff of nightmares.

outside of confirming suspected sympathizers and adding people to watch, is this really that hurtful? I mean news organizations report, so they like information... other people may be added to the list that don't really care, kinda like signing up the guy you don't like for all kinds of marketing emails... And they probably don't blast out their future plans to 400+ emails... now it's just known who the relays are, and they already knew the old and new source email accounts...

and besides... any sneaky person trying to hide this wouldn't really use their REAL email would they?

Calm down, this kind of mailing is a press release and the intended recipients are mostly journalists. The addresses are not (necessarily) bad guys that Anon should now harrass.

Of course, you won't see good establishment American journalists on the list, because they aren't interested in finding out what the other side is saying, not when they can take dictation from their sources in the US government and military.

I would think if the Talibs are onerous and brutal enough to shoot videos of beheadings and shootings, then they make their own porn during their holy-book endorsed orgies of raping "perceived" non-Muslim women, children and men (most of whom self-identify as Muslim).

Besides anyone who has a semblance of understanding of Afghan and Islamic culture (or has read the Kite-runner) knows all about bachabazi and rampant pedophilia and sodomy that is practiced in most of these societies ... primarily because they are still practicing what their desert prophet practiced.

That might be the first time I would actually cheer and applaud Anon. However, I'm pretty sure if those folks have any intelligence they no longer use those email addresses since Stuxnet 2 is guarenteed to be heading their way.

Although the 409 scanners could have a trios day......

"Hello, my name is Fasul. I am a fighter for Allah and am in reciept of 400 matyredome vests that need to be smuggled out of Kenya. I need to get them to someone who will use them. Please remit $100000 American to me so that we can help the poor non-matyred achieve paradise.. I await your reply. "

Or maybe something about smuggling goats.... And yeah I know there were typos.... aren't there always in those things?

outside of confirming suspected sympathizers and adding people to watch, is this really that hurtful? I mean news organizations report, so they like information... other people may be added to the list that don't really care, kinda like signing up the guy you don't like for all kinds of marketing emails... And they probably don't blast out their future plans to 400+ emails... now it's just known who the relays are, and they already knew the old and new source email accounts...

and besides... any sneaky person trying to hide this wouldn't really use their REAL email would they?

I was at Al Qaida for about six and a half years, and now I've been at The Taliban for that long. One thing that struck me immediately about the two terrorist organizations -- an impression that has been reinforced almost daily -- is that Al Qaida does everything wrong, and The Taliban does everything right. Sure, it's a sweeping generalization, but a surprisingly accurate one. It's pretty crazy. There are probably a hundred or even two hundred different ways you can compare the two looneybins, and The Taliban is superior in all but three of them, if I recall correctly. I actually did a spreadsheet at one point but Mullah Omar wouldn't let me show it to anyone, even though recruiting loved it.

I mean, just to give you a very brief taste: Al Qaida recruiting process is fundamentally flawed by having teams blow themselves up, so their hiring is incredibly dismembered across teams, despite various efforts they've made to level it out. And their operations are a mess; they don't really have IEDs and they make children pretty much do everything, which leaves almost no time for Koran reading . . . .

Calm down, this kind of mailing is a press release and the intended recipients are mostly journalists. The addresses are not (necessarily) bad guys that Anon should now harrass.

Of course, you won't see good establishment American journalists on the list, because they aren't interested in finding out what the other side is saying, not when they can take dictation from their sources in the US government and military.

I may be in the minority here, but I don't think anyone needs to know what they're saying when the Taliban are the kind of people that think that shooting children and throwing acid on people for promoting education for women is a morally acceptable and laudable thing to do. Remember, these are the same people that get worked up into a killing frenzy when half-way across the world someone burns a printed copy of their holy book or dares to draw a picture of the prophet.

Analysis of religious figures from the outside, alongside how they are interpreted within the religion can shed some useful insights into cultural themes.

A single sentence slipped in at the end of a short comment on a mainstream website however, is just a potshot.

It encourages a mob mentality among people who already have negative feelings, without providing any additional perspective. And, for the targets of the comment, it only expresses contempt, and seeks to offend. On one level, being offended isn't a tragedy in itself, but it *is* counter productive if only accomplishes increased diffidence on both sides.

I do not mean to imply that there is a happy medium between faith and reason, or between pedophilia and not pedophilia, I mean that there are productive ways to engage and unproductive ways to engage. If you're dismissing a billion people with a single clause (and I doubt you think the statement applies to even a large minority of that population anyway), then your statement is probably stretching the bounds of what is rational.

Calm down, this kind of mailing is a press release and the intended recipients are mostly journalists. The addresses are not (necessarily) bad guys that Anon should now harrass.

Of course, you won't see good establishment American journalists on the list, because they aren't interested in finding out what the other side is saying, not when they can take dictation from their sources in the US government and military.

Taliban are the kind of people that think that shooting children and throwing acid on people for promoting education for women is a morally acceptable and laudable thing to do. Remember, these are the same people that get worked up into a killing frenzy when half-way across the world someone burns a printed copy of their holy book or dares to draw a picture of the prophet.

Do you know the source of that information?

I'm not saying you're incorrect in this particular case, but there are very few circumstances in which one should fail to get a second perspective.